Apple App Store DRM could see VLC player pulled

A clash between Apple's digital rights management, and the
open-source nature of the VLC media player,
means the popular app could soon disappear from Apple's iPad and
iPhone.

We wrote about the app
last week, as the iPad edition became available to iPhone and
iPod touch users in an update. The ease of use, speed of transfer
and support of many different video codecs made it an easy
recommendation, especially as it's free.

But one of the program's primary developers, VideoLAN's Rémi
Denis-Courmont, has taken offense to the discordant licenses, and
formally requested that Apple takes the app offline for "copyright
infringement".

His bone of contention comes from the limited number of
devices that the app can be installed on. Programs distributed
through iTunes can only be installed on up to five iOS devices, as
a DRM safety net to hep ensure apps aren't openly shared around
friends.

But while very few users will run into problems with the
relaxed digital rights, any restrictions placed on VLC directly
oppose the open source nature of the original software, and the
original GNU
General Public License. By imposing any level of DRM, the third
party development house Applidium and App Store shop-keep Apple are
violating the original terms.

On his mailing list, Courmont explains that "while the rules for distribution of open-source
or 'free' software are extremely relaxed, they do exist and have to
be abode by." He argues, "VLC and open-source software in general
would not have reached their current quality and success if it had
not been for their license.

"Concerned users are advised to look for [the] application
on more open mobile platforms for the time being," Courmont
says. You can still get it on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch here, for the time being.

An eerily similar dispute cropped up earlier this year, with
GNU Go. A
developer released a free iPhone port of the open source puzzle
game, only for the original developers to strike back against the
same, prickly iTunes DRM. Apple decided to continue its five-device
blanket policy, and simply removed GNU Go from the App
Store.

If Apple makes the same decision again, it will be another
hefty blow against Apple's "closed" system, and a celebration for
critics opposed to mobile DRM and App Store
gatekeepers. For those of us just wanting to watch DivX files
on our iOS devices, it will be nothing short of a huge
disappointment.

"It seems that people are now accounting me responsible for
this," writes Courmont, who filed the notification of copyright
infringement to Apple. "I am not the one who took the risks of
violating copyright here."